Franklin Pierce Huddle Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley
Page 4 of 8
In your career there's a very interesting journey, because after all, you wrote a dissertation on cotton in that region, which shows you were knowledgeable both about the history and the economic and other social currents in the region. Then you had a number of assignments that took you to different places, primarily in Asia. But then you finally came home again to the place that you had studied. What stands out most in this odyssey of yours? You were in Nepal. You were in Thailand. You were in other places, in your journey as a diplomat.
I started out in Central Asia, and I never thought there would be independent countries there or a chance to be a diplomat there. So I left that region. I moved towards the Far East and South Asia. Of course, the world changed -- 1991, '92 -- I realized that there might be a chance I could come back and do to the area where I'd done my doctor's degree work. The most important single part of it was that all of these countries had common themes. I liked places that were difficult and challenged, that, for reasons of poverty or distance or isolation, wouldn't have an automatic, easy access in Washington. I wanted something where you could make a difference by being an effective advocate or interface with your country in Washington. After all, if you're ambassador to France and there's a big problem, you pick up the phone and call the White House, or the White House picks up the phone and calls Chirac's office. Whereas in Tajikistan or something like that, the ambassador's role is, in some sense, much larger, because there aren't all the other players that have a degree of interest in the country.
And as such an advocate, I guess your job can change dramatically, based on major events?
Yes.
So that had you been ambassador to Tajikistan before 9/11, your situation would have been much different, in terms of the requirements of alerting Washington to the problems there.
Yes. In fact, Tajikistan is a classic case. We had literally closed off most of our operation in Tajikistan, and we operated out of Kazakhstan sort of on a caretaker basis. After 9/11, we came back down there, we had various operations going into Afghanistan, we had gas and go, there was military presence. Gulyuk was considered for a major base. Secretary Rumsfeld was dropping in. General Franks was dropping in. The president of Tajikistan just went to Washington, D.C., and stayed at Blair House for an official visit, and so on. All of this is a very different world, and it made my job rather different than what I anticipated. I figured it was going to be sort of interesting, but somewhat focused primarily on trying to get Washington's attention to this distant, poor country. Instead, it was managing Washington's very strong attention.
We should explain to our audience that this region was once controlled by the Soviet Union, then with the collapse of communism and the collapse of the Berlin Wall in '89, the Soviets generally withdrew from the area. At that time, say, the nineties, American policy generally lost its interest in that region, I think it's fair to say, and in Afghanistan. With the events of 9/11, there was a new recognition that our disengagement was not a policy that would work.
Being a diplomat, let me soften off some of those Berkeley professorial formulations.
Okay.
We didn't lose interest, but we didn't have the same degree of interest. We had newly independent countries from the former Soviet Union; in Central Asia, you had Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan. Then there was a several-year period where we were looking around and setting up embassies and developing commercial relationships, but there wasn't any grand, unifying theme. There wasn't, as you say, until the United States realized that it was high time to do something about the Taliban. And at that point, suddenly, Central Asia had a very strategic location.
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